177 – Louis Geigerman, Founder Of National ARD/IEP, Father Of Two Including A Son With Aspergers Who Tragically Took His Own Life

Transcript:

Tom Couch: Special thanks to Horizon Therapeutics for sponsoring today’s Special Fathers Network Dad to Dad Podcast. Working tirelessly to research, develop and bring forward medicines for people living with rare and rheumatic diseases. Discover more about Horizon Therapeutics’ mission at horizontherapeutics.com.

Louis Geigerman: Everything that I believed regarding my son was what I observed because I knew him better than anybody else. I knew him better, and that’s something that parents really need to understand. They have all these experts that trot out there and start giving you opinions and whatnot. Don’t ever forget you’re the person that knows your child better than anybody else. Don’t ever forget that.

Tom Couch: That’s our guest this week. Louis Geigerman, founder of the National ARD/IEP Advocates, who counsel and represent parents of kids with special needs in schools throughout Texas. Louis had a son, Ben, who had Asperger’s and tragically died shortly after graduating cum laude from Texas State University. We’ll hear the Geigerman family story and more on this Special Fathers Network Dad to Dad Podcast. Say hello to David Hirsch.

David Hirsch: Hi, and thanks for listening to the Dad to Dad Podcast, fathers mentoring fathers of children with special needs, presented by the Special Fathers Network.

Tom Couch: The Special Fathers Network is a dad to dad mentoring program for fathers raising children with special needs. Through our personalized matching process, new fathers with special needs children connect with mentor fathers in a similar situation. It’s a great way for dads to support dads. To find out more, go to 21stcenturydads.org.

David Hirsch: And if you’re a dad looking for help or would like to offer help, we’d be honored to have you join our closed Facebook group. Please go to facebook.com/groups and search Dad to Dad.

Tom Couch: And now let’s listen to this conversation between Louis Geigerman and David Hirsch.

David Hirsch: I am thrilled to be talking today with Louis Geigerman of Houston, Texas, who’s the father of two, and founder of the National ARD/IEP Advocates, a nationally recognized firm of non-attorney advocates, specializing in advocating for families of children with special needs in public schools across the state of Texas.

Louis, thank you for taking the time to do a podcast interview for the Special Fathers Network.

Louis Geigerman: It’s my pleasure. Thanks for having me.

David Hirsch: You and your former wife Joanne were married for 19 years and are the proud parents of two, Kayla, 29, and older brother Ben, who had Asperger’s and tragically took his own life at age 22 in July 2011.

Let’s start with some background. Where did you grow up? Tell me something about your family.

Louis Geigerman: Well, let’s see. I grew up in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. I’m the youngest of three children, the son of a doctor and a mother who was an English teacher.

David Hirsch: Okay. I know that you’d mentioned in a previous conversation that your dad was an anesthesiologist there in Oklahoma City. And then did he move around, or did the whole family move around?

Louis Geigerman: We all moved around, but, well, I should say pretty much he did. Really, most of the moving came about toward the end of his career. I mean, he was established in Oklahoma for a long time, and so really when he went into private practice, he was in Oklahoma City, and he stayed there until I went to college.

Something else was interesting. Back in the seventies when Nixon had the ping pong diplomacy and had the opening to China, he became interested also in doing the power of positive suggestion, hypnosis. He was actually experimenting with hypnosis as another way of dealing with pain management, which was something really very innovative, if you think about it, in the seventies in the medical profession.  

David Hirsch: Absolutely. Yeah. Well, thanks for sharing. I’m sort of curious to know, how would you describe your relationship with your dad?

Louis Geigerman: Hmm. It was good. I mean, we had our ups and downs, like any type of relationship. One thing he imparted to me was a love for fishing, and so we used to go fishing a lot together. We also went to baseball games and Oklahoma football games. He was a major sports fan. But one thing he always said to me—and I didn’t really realize until later on in life how important it was—that you should take time off and do something different than what you’re doing every day.

It’s just so important to have a vacation. But do something different, because life can be extremely stressful. And for his business, anesthesia can be very, very stressful. He had a lot of days when he would be on call, and go to the OR, and sometimes bad things happened to people, and they passed away. Very stressful. But it’s funny. When I got older, I really saw what he was talking about.

David Hirsch: Yeah. Well, some things you don’t realize until you have the benefit of hindsight. The phrase that comes to mind is, “You can’t connect the dots looking forward. You can only connect the dots when you’re looking backwards.” That’s a really important understanding.

And another way to think about it is that you have to have balance in your life, right? If you just do one thing, you just get bored. We’re human beings. You can only do something for so long before it loses its appeal no matter what that something is.

Louis Geigerman: This the other thing that he said to me. He really made it really clear that in the medical profession, he was able to do things where he was able to give back to society. He did a lot of charity cases, and he felt that that was very, very important. And he said, “At one time I was employed in the securities business,” and I think that’s what you do, “and I couldn’t do as much.” And he always said, “I try to find something that you can give back.”

And it’s funny, he died before he could see what I had been doing with my advocacy work, where I’m able to do what he had always strived for: to make the world a better place. And so that’s something I take with me.

David Hirsch: Excellent. Well, in addition to that, were there any other takeaways or important lessons that you learned from your dad?

Louis Geigerman: Well, always be ethical. I mean, that was something that was really important for him. I’ve led my life to be ethical. Also, be able to appreciate a good joke and appreciate a good glass of scotch. I don’t want to make it like my dad was a big drinker. He wasn’t. But appreciate a good glass of scotch. Appreciate a good joke and, you know, try to give back. Basically he wanted me to be a mensch. A mensch is being a good human being in Judaism for those who don’t know. And that’s what I’ve tried to be.

David Hirsch: Yeah. Well that’s fabulous. It sounds like he was a good role model and he was present. And it sounds like he was not only career focused, doing something that was meaningful in the medical profession, but he had some outside interests. So there was a decent balance in his life as well. My recollection was that you went to the Oklahoma University and then UNLV and you got a degree in hotel administration.

Louis Geigerman: That’s right.

David Hirsch: And I’m wondering, where did your career take you?

Louis Geigerman: That’s a good question. It went from here to here to here. I was in the restaurant business for a number of years. And then somebody talked to me about getting into the investment business.

I was looking for another career change, so I did that. My sister-in-law was in that, and she did a lot of work with schools and hospitals. I got interested in it, and then I ran with it. I was actually in the investment business for 20 years. I had a lot of business courses as part of hotel administration, so it really wasn’t such a far deviation from it, to be honest.

So I did that. And then I got married and we had a child, and then we had another child. The first child ended up having challenges, and that necessitated me to really start understanding how to access services, although initially I was more passive in how I was handling education with him in particular. For one thing, my former wife had her master’s degree in library science. I let her drive the ship for a while. After a while, I felt he was floundering, and I decided I was going to take more control and be more of an active participant.

And from that point I started driving the ship. I wasn’t happy with how schools were working with my child. So then I started doing advocacy at the same time I was doing securities, and at a certain point, I really started liking it. I said to myself that when I made a dollar more than I was making in the securities business, I was going to start doing that full-time. That’s what I did. That’s what I’ve been doing ever since.

David Hirsch: Well, I love this story. Thanks for sharing. And so I’m sort of curious to know before Ben’s diagnosis, did you or Joanne have any connection or experience with the special needs community?

Louis Geigerman: Not at all.

David Hirsch: And how did the Asperger’s diagnosis come about?

Louis Geigerman: Well, first of all, his reaction to stimuli was different. Okay. He didn’t respond to sounds as normal kids would. He played differently. We would wind up toys, and then he would go around in circles and sing gibberish, which was strange.

He was in a preschool, and they said, “You might want to just have him evaluated.” And so all of these things came together and we got him assessed. Then we had the diagnosis. It was like a bolt of lightning goes right through you, you know? It’s like, whoa. Okay, yeah, there’s a problem. Somebody is in PDD-NOS, pervasive developmental disorder, not otherwise specific—what in the hell is that?

David Hirsch: How old would he have been then?

Louis Geigerman: Well, we had him tested at two and a half. It was near his third birthday.

David Hirsch: Okay. Can you remember back then what fears or concerns you had?

Louis Geigerman: Well, I can tell you one thing. PDD-NOS has been a label that for years people were trying to figure out: what the hell is that? It just wasn’t clear. It’s a little clearer today. But of course our question was, what happens going forward? What’s going to happen in the future for this child? We solicited some help from somebody, and at three, a child can receive services from their public school.

Somebody actually came into the house that was from the district. I’m not going to say her name or anything like that, but I will tell you, this person was a PhD psychologist. She hadn’t even seen the kid for five seconds. She sits us down,  and the first thing out of her mouth—without even looking or really spending any time with him to really understand who he was—was, “You need to be prepared that he will be institutionalized for the rest of his life.”

David Hirsch: Wow. 

Louis Geigerman: Yeah, wow. I mean, this was without even assessing him or doing anything. So as you can imagine, that’s a gut punch for sure. My former wife was crying from this. I responded differently. I said, “Oh, really? I’m going to show you.”

And that was my kick in the butt. Like, okay, let’s just see what we can do about that. That made me just absolutely do everything I could to basically show her, “How dare you come up with that?” My former wife was like, “Oh my God, it’s over.” And I’m saying, “It’s not over. This is just starting.”

David Hirsch: Yeah. Well, I can paraphrase what you’ve said. Louis. First of all, bad bedside manner, no real evaluation to make some type of definitive projection like that. And you took it as a challenge, right? That’s what I heard.

Louis Geigerman: Yeah, that’s exactly what I did. I won’t accept that. But anyway, how dare somebody do that to somebody? Okay. But that started a few fears, you know?

David Hirsch: Well, thanks for your authenticity. Was there any advice you got early on? Not from this well-educated psychologist, but as you progressed from there, was there any advice that you got that you can look back on and say, that really helped, or that made a difference?

Louis Geigerman: Well, early on, not really. Because really we were doing our own thing pretty much, and just doing it based on what we felt was best. I’ll be honest with you—not that I can recollect. There were some ideas that somebody had helped me with regarding advocacy. But not really. Everything I believed regarding my son was what I observed, because I knew him better than anybody else.

And that’s something parents really need to understand. They have all these experts that trot out there and start giving you opinions and whatnot. Don’t ever forget, you’re the person that knows your child better than anybody else. Don’t ever forget that.

Now you can learn things. You can learn how to manage behavior. You can learn how to help in speech. But don’t make no mistake, you know your child better than anybody else, and don’t let anybody ever tell you anything different.

David Hirsch: Yeah. That’s an important takeaway. Thanks for sharing. And you know, you don’t maybe have that understanding right away, certainly as a young parent. But as time goes by, you realize that these are people just doing that job, right, as best they can based on what they’re observing. And it’s a well-informed or well-intended opinion that people express. But at a core level, like you said, you know your child better than anybody else, and you have to trust your gut, that if something doesn’t square, you need to keep digging or keep looking for more information. So thanks for sharing.

So, not to focus on the negative, but I’m wondering, what were some of the bigger challenges you encountered during Ben’s life, raising a child with Asperger’s?

Louis Geigerman: Of course, Asperger’s doesn’t exist anymore. Okay, so it’s “autism spectrum disorder.” His lack of social skills, really, and his social isolation was a huge problem for him. Imagine going through life until you get to college and not having any friends. Not having people you can share stuff with. Just basically coming home, doing your thing, being a voracious reader, watching shows, whatever. Very brilliant individual, but not having any friends to share things with.

He didn’t have that. There are so many families that experience that with kids on the spectrum. I’ll have families tell me when I work with them, “Oh, I have a high functioning kid. I have a high functioning kid in the spectrum. Oh, he doesn’t have that many problems.” I say, “Let me guess. He’s got social skills problems.” “Well, yeah.”

Well, let me tell you something. You have a bigger challenge with that than you do with a child that is lower functioning, because they know they’re different, they want to have interaction with other kids, and they just can’t put it together. And it wears on them, and it depresses them. It’s something you have to really work on, because at the end of the day, that’s going to be the biggest limiting issue.

The other problem was that he had motor planning challenges. He couldn’t do the typical jobs we had when we were 16, 17 years old. You know, he couldn’t work at McDonald’s. And it would’ve been difficult at a retail store for him to do stuff. So he wasn’t able to create a portfolio of jobs to do. He didn’t have a paper route. Back when I was a kid, we had paper routes. Temple Grandin talks about that, which is another way for a kid to have a job. But he didn’t have that ability to experience.

Then he gets an internship, and from what he told me—his internship was with an accounting, a pensioning company—this guy asked him, “Do you have a girlfriend?” I mean, what the hell has that got to do with anything? And then he let him go in two weeks. It’s like he never had a positive work experience. He didn’t have anybody that would take a chance on him. So I think employment, social skills, most definitely, and social isolation was a huge, huge thing for him.

David Hirsch: So was he actually being treated for depression, or not?

Louis Geigerman: Well, no, not really. I mean, he was being treated later on, before when he went to college. But when he went to college, he had made friends. He actually found a group of friends that were terrific. These kids were just amazing human beings and loved him, and he hung with them. They were inseparable. So it was just amazing.

David Hirsch: Well, it sounds like he made a lot of progress from high school to college as far as his social skills and fitting in.

Louis Geigerman: He did.

David Hirsch: And he was a great student, from what I remember you telling me as well.

Louis Geigerman: He was.

David Hirsch: So it’s been a decade since Ben passed away.

Louis Geigerman: Yeah. Next month it will be ten years.

David Hirsch: Does it look different now ten years later than it did then, or not?

Louis Geigerman: Well, the intense emotions and the intense pain are different. I mean, the intensity is definitely different. Does it look different? I  don’t think about it constantly. Back then I was thinking about it constantly. But there are things that will be reminding me of situations. Things like this, like talking about it, you know, it opens up some stuff.

But you know, it is what it is, David. I’m open about it. The way I originally described it, and I found other people who say this, it’s a hole in your heart that’s always there. It might get smaller, but it’s always there. It will always be a part of me and always a part of my experience forever.

But you know, it’s taught me a lot of lessons, I’ll tell you. I think I’m a better person, I hope That’s all I’m trying to be, a better person now.

David Hirsch: Yeah. Well, you’d like to think that his short life had a purpose, and some of the things you’ve been doing as a result are a part of his legacy. And I know that one of the things that you created is the Benjamin J. Geigerman lecture series at the University of Texas. I’m wondering if you could talk a little bit about that.

Louis Geigerman: I explain the experience that nobody wanted to give him a chance with employment. That’s big problem. If we have a 10% unemployment rate, people are saying, “That’s terrible. 10%, whoa. We’re in bad straits.” Right? When you’re thinking about people on the spectrum, how about an 80% unemployment rate? How would that go over in society?

The problem is that we have brilliant people with incredible skills that are being untapped and unrecognized by society. And too often when you think of vocational placements, mostly they try to figure out, “Oh, well, we’ll groom somebody to be a sacker at Safeway.” No, I’m talking white collar, executive level jobs. They can do amazing, amazing things.

And so the lecture series is profiling companies that are doing that. We’re talking about individuals in the spectrum who are working for these companies. They have talked about their journey and how it’s worked for them. It’s there, number one, to raise consciousness, to communicate to corporations that you need to be hiring these individuals. You need to look at them. They may be diamonds in the rough, but you need to change your hiring practices, because at the end of the day, you’re going to have much better employees, a lot less turnover, and it’ll improve your bottom line.

And at the same time, I want to give hope to individuals that there is a pathway, because your job is so much a part of your personal dignity. If you can’t make a living wage, if you can’t support yourself, you’re on the government dole, you don’t feel good about yourself. So that’s what the mission is.

David Hirsch: Yeah. Well, I love it and I’m wondering if companies like SAP and Walgreens are the type of companies you’re talking about, or if there are some others.

Louis Geigerman: Actually, SAP has been a leader, and they do an “Autism at Work” program. We really want to call it more “neurodiversity in the workplace,” as opposed to targeting a particular group. But basically Autism at Work showcases companies that are doing just that in ways that companies can find a way to hire more individuals.

I’m going to say a plug, sorry, but if somebody wants to make a contribution to the Benjamin J. Geigerman lecture series, bring it on. That helps us, because we want to do job fairs for these individuals and really make it where it’s not an issue anymore.

David Hirsch: I know that there were some organizations that you’d mentioned in a prior conversation, and I’m wondering if you can spend a few minutes before we talk about the National ARD/IEP Advocates organization. One of them is the Council of Parent Attorneys and Advocates, COPAA. What is that organization? Who do they serve?

Louis Geigerman: Well, the Council of Parent Attorneys and Advocates is the largest national organization for the parent side attorneys, parent side advocates, and parents, that come together for information on how to advocate for their child with the public schools, in a nutshell.

Right now we have a little over 2,600 members. I am a charter member of that organization, and in 2020 they named me the outstanding advocate of the organization for my work I had done. And that meant so much to me. It’s very humbling when your peers do that.

If you have a child in special ed or even 504, I am telling you, you need to join the organization. It’s copaa.org. They have national conferences every March in different places. I think next year it’s in Boston. Please come. Please join. These are kindred spirits, and they’re wonderful.

Also, there are other organizations that you join, like the National Alliance of Mentally Ill. They have chapters all over the country. They do conferences, and it’s important because you can network with other individuals to find clinicians that can help your situation.

The American Foundation for Suicide Prevention is another organization. It works to prevent suicides, and there have been a rash of them. I remember after Ben died, I went there the first year. I think I shared this with you the other day when we were talking.

We went the right after he died. They have what they call an “out of darkness walk.” Well, suicide has this taboo, that nobody wants to talk about it. The idea is to come out of the darkness and talk about it, and try to raise consciousness.

That first year I went, there were maybe a couple of hundred people. Today there are thousands and thousands of people that come to this. There are teams of individuals that come who were friends of these individuals. And one of the most stark reminders was they have a thing along the sidewalk where they have all the shoes of individuals who no longer walk the earth.

That’s what they did in the Holocaust Museum in Washington. But you see those shoes, and it takes your breath away. It makes it really personal. But if you know somebody that’s hurting, if you know somebody that needs some help, AFSP is there. They also do talks.

And of course all of these organizations are worthy of your contributions. Covid has created even more of a problem. So many people have been depressed because they’ve been socially isolated, and suicide has been an even bigger problem as a result.

David Hirsch: Yeah. Well, thanks for sharing. It’s the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention, afsp.org.

And I love the visual image you were relating about the “out of darkness walk,” shedding light on a problem through the visual image of these piles of shoes. You know, the scale, the impact of the issue on humanity is what I heard you saying.

Let us switch gears and talk about the organization you helped start, which is this National ARD/IEP Advocates. What motivated you to do this, and how has it transpired over the last 20 years?

Louis Geigerman: That’s interesting. Actually, I’ve been doing it now for 26 years. So it’s funny. A friend of mine from my hometown, Oklahoma City, moved here, and she dealt with deaf education, so she knew what I was doing to help Ben. She said, “There’s something you ought to consider—being an advocate.”

And at that time I had no idea what that was. But all she had to do was just give me the idea, and then I ran with it. So in 1995, I took on my first client. I started doing it, and I found out I was actually pretty good at it, you know? And then I started taking more clients, and over time I take them soup to nuts. A lot of parents, once they start working with me, get a different response and they know their school is having their feet held to the fire.

I’ll represent families. If it comes to a head, I can also file for administrative  due process against districts. I file complaints, whatever. But by the end of the day, what I’m doing is trying to level the playing field for children, and empower the parents. That’s what I do.

And I have nine other associates with varying backgrounds, including people who are dyslexia specialists and former special ed directors. So we have a cadre  of individuals who are really experienced, who really understand and who are very child centered.

David Hirsch: Yeah. Well, I love the work that you do. I’m wondering, under the banner of advice, if there’s any advice you might be able to share beyond the scope of this conversation, or maybe something you want to emphasize to the parents, the dads in particular, that might be listening.

Louis Geigerman: Well, most of the time dads are the working person in the family. But you try to be as close as you can to your kids to understand where they are, as a close presence. Like I said before, the most important thing is to be an active participant.

But don’t accept everything that the school tells you as being the truth. I’m not saying schools lie. However, as a general rule, I find that schools have a different agenda. The agenda for the parents is for the child to become a taxpaying citizen and to be what they want to be. And schools are really more about let’s get them out of the system and off the payroll. I mean, make them not a liability to us. So if you keep that mindset, I think that’s the most important thing.

David Hirsch: Excellent.

Louis Geigerman: There’s one more thing. One more thing I just thought of.  Early on in my career, I said something from my experience to a parent that I helped. I said, “Okay, you have a child in the spectrum. You need to think about some things in this way. God forbid this happens, but you need to think about if your child has cancer. Okay, well, why cancer? If your child had cancer, what would you do? You would find the finest doctors in the world you could to relieve that problem. You would go to the end of the world to do that.”

I said, “Think of it in those terms. You’ve got a serious medical issue, and you need to do everything you can to help treat that.” And he told me that was the single best recommendation I ever said, because that put him in a different mode in how to provide services and assistance for his child.

David Hirsch: Yeah. Well, what I heard you say is you need to light a fire, right? You need to get somebody’s attention. And fortunately, when you hear a cancer diagnosis, it’s usually a big wake up call for people. And I think that what I hear you saying, Louis, is that you need to create a sense of urgency. Don’t be passive. Don’t take the “let’s wait and see” attitude, a “sometimes things get better before they get worse” mentality. And if you were to err, err on the side of engaging. Be intentional.

Louis Geigerman: Agreed. That’s exactly it. Well said.

David Hirsch: So let’s give a special shout out to our mutual friend, Frederick Jefferson there in Houston with the Man to Man program for helping connect us.

Louis Geigerman: Thanks for putting us together. For sure, man.

David Hirsch: Is there anything else you’d like to say before we wrap up?

Louis Geigerman: No. I really admire you for this project, and it’s something that’s needed. I hope that we can inspire other dads to really be leaders and to be more connected to their child’s life, because it’s so important.

David Hirsch: If somebody wants to learn more about the National ARD/IEP Advocates or contact you, how would they go about doing that?

Louis Geigerman: They can email me at nationalardadvocates@gmail.com. And if you can’t remember that, just go to narda.org. Go to my website, it’s got my email, it’s got a whole bunch of stuff on there. The easiest thing to do is remember narda.org.

David Hirsch: Is there anything else you want to say before we wrap up?

Louis Geigerman: Yeah. I do a weekly radio show called the Special Ed Section 504 Radio Hour on cypressradio.org. It’s on every Saturday from 10 to 11:00 a.m. Central time. Also, at cypressradio.org there are some archives up there. We do incredible interviews with people like Temple Grandin and Dr. Ross Green, and others. I’m starting my seventh year of the show, and we’ve had just phenomenal guests. It’s something a parent can get really good information from. So check it out, cypressradio.org, the Special Ed Section 504 Radio Hour.

David Hirsch: Excellent. We’ll be sure to include that in the show notes as well. Louis, thank you for taking the time and many insights. As a reminder, Louis is just one of the dads who’s part of the Special Fathers Network, a mentoring program for fathers raising a child with special needs. If you’d like to be a mentor father, or are seeking advice from a mentor father with a similar situation to your own, please go to 21stcenturydads.org.

Thank you for listening to the latest episode of the Special Fathers Network  Dad to Dad Podcast. I hope you enjoyed the conversation as much as I did. As you probably know, the 21st Century Dads Foundation is a 501(c)3 not-for-profit organization, which means we need your help to keep our content free to all concerned. Would you please consider making a tax deductible contribution? I would really appreciate your support.

Louis, thanks again.

Louis Geigerman: Adios. It’s my pleasure.

Tom Couch: And thank you for listening to the Dad to Dad Podcast presented by the Special Fathers Network. The Special Fathers Network is a dad to dad mentoring program for fathers raising children with special needs. Through our personalized matching process, new fathers with special needs children connect with mentor fathers in a similar situation. It’s a great way for fathers to support fathers. Go to 21stcenturydads.org.

David Hirsch: And if you’re a dad looking for help or would like to offer help, we would be honored to have you join our closed Facebook group. Please go to facebook.com/groups and search dad to dad. Also, please be sure to register for the Special Fathers Network biweekly Zoom calls held on the first and third Tuesdays of every month.

Lastly, we’re always looking to share interesting stories. If you’d like to share your story, or know of a compelling story, please send an email to David@21stcenturydads.org.

Tom Couch: The Dad to Dad podcast was produced by Couch Audio for the Special Fathers Network. Thanks again to Horizon Therapeutics who believe that science and compassion must work together to transform lives. That’s why they work tirelessly to research, develop, and bring forward medicines for people living with rare and rheumatic diseases. Discover more about Horizon Therapeutics at horizontherapeutics.com.